Trumptatorship 6: Raining on the Midterm Massacre Picnic

This is the 6th in a series of articles covering Donald Trump's efforts to end liberal democracy in the United States and replace it with authoritarian autocracy--a Trumptatorship--and the grim consequences of that. The others:
Trumptatorship 1: The Crisis
Trumptatorship 2: Of Enemies, Alien & Domestic
Trumptatorship 3: Gangster Government
Trumptatorship 4: Speech, Free & Otherwise
Trumptatorship 5: Manufacturing State Capture

This was supposed to be the whipped-into-updated article I started over a year ago about, among other things, the Trumptatorship's deployment, under the pretext of "immigration enforcement," of a massive army of paramilitary goons to kidnap and murder people in our streets or haul them off to a growing network of concentration camps. But, as happened before, events have overtaken me.

There was never any doubt about what most Americans thought about the Trumptatorship but finally given an opportunity to weigh in on it in a more-tangible-than-opinion-poll-y way, they've just gone to the polls to reject it. Overwhelmingly. On Tuesday, Democrats swept states they haven't won in the lifetime of most people alive today, a full-blown midterm massacre of historical proportions. There is, obviously, a great deal of celebration by opponents of the Trumptatorship, smiles and back-slapping at the prospect that this will undo it, appropriate public salivating at the expectation of finally conducting oversight of the lawless regime, bringing justice to the wrongdoers, declarations that Trump and MAGA are finished, cooked, defeated, consigned to the ash-heap of history.

No one likes to be the rain on anyone's picnic but a more realistic evaluation suggests it's not only far too early to begin to write an epitaph for the Trumptatorship but premature to conclude it has even been dealt a particularly egregious wound. To be sure, if the U.S. was still a regularly-functioning liberal democracy, the injury would have been mortal. But that's not the Trumptatorship.

Seventeen months ago, I noted that "Trump's ultimate vision of America this time around," as expressed by his actions, "doesn't involve things like congress or courts, checks or balances, laws, the constitution or a free, liberal democratic society." Trump was "focused on building that vision, a sort of alt-presidency that functions entirely outside the bounds of the law and the constitution as a reactionary despotism that destroys the constitutional order that empowered it..." That's why Trump was then and has remained almost entirely uninterested in getting congress to pass legislation. Things like passing legislation is the constitutional way. In the Trumptatorship, the would-be dictator merely dictates, issuing what he calls "executive orders", "proclamations", etc. that, unlike the actual instruments that bear those titles, purport to write, rewrite or revoke federal, state and local laws and even parts of the constitution itself, then throws the entire weight of the federal government behind enforcing those dictates.

Americans try to fight back using the traditional tools of the liberal democracy. The number of lawsuits against Trump's illegal actions is staggering. But increasingly, the regime simply ignores or defies decisions that run against it. With Trump as the chief executive, the courts have no effective mechanism to which they can turn to enforce their rulings. The judicial branch itself, meanwhile, has almost completely broken down as a consequence of the Supreme Court, with its reactionary majority, constantly undermining it to side with Trump--crippling the ability of the judiciary to function and, in practice, dismantling it in increments.

With congress, the story is the same. Last month, I wrote that

"Since Trump's current regime began, Republicans in congress have persistently moved to expand Trump's dictatorial powers while removing even more executive accountability--building the Trumptatorship and essentially abolishing their own branch of government one piece at a time."

That bleeding, at least, can be somewhat staunched by Democrats' big congressional wins. How much remains to be seen though, as Democratic officials' ongoing war against their own party's base means many congressional "Democrats" are of the MAGA Lite/Clintonite right persuasion, with still more, handpicked by the "Democratic leadership" to try to beat back the progressive uprising that drove Tuesday's results, soon to be sworn. It's likely that many will continue to perniciously side with Trump and his ghouls on a range of critical issues, with some of the new inductees doing the same--self-immolating (and barbecuing the rest of us in the process) to that tired, tone-deaf ditty of "bipartisanship" under the "new" "leadership" that is likely to be the same old Clintonite-right garbage that sings that same tune. Return to "normal"--the pre-Trump status-quo that saddled us with Trump--instead of fixing this (or anything). To be sure, an united, dedicated congressional majority could use its power of the purse to thoroughly geld the Trumptatorship. But it would be foolish to expect a congress led by Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer--and still, thanks to them, laden with far too many conservatives--to reliably do anything of the sort.

The new congress can pass laws. Trump can veto them and, plagued by too many Republican and Democratic enablers, congress usually won't (if ever) be able to override. And it probably wouldn't even matter if it could. In the elated reaction to the election results, many seem excited about restoring this-or-that agency or this-or-that funding, without giving pause to recognize that all of those agencies and all of that funding was already passed into law by congress;. In dismembering all of it, Trump was already violating the law. Passing new law reiterating all the laws Trump has already violated and continues to violate doesn't really change anything.

The Trumptatorship has been one long crime-spree and when it comes to bringing some justice there or in some way holding it responsible for its actions, we've seen that show before. When Republicans lost control of the House in the middle of Trump's 1st term, Democrats tried to conduct oversight and ran into an executive asserting legally baseless and unconstitutional "absolute immunity" from providing congress with testimony or documents on the regime's activities. They didn't give congress anything they didn't want to give it and that was that. Congress would unfrivolously find regime figures in contempt for this behavior; the Trump regime would then simply refuse to prosecute itself for the offense. Trump can pardon any one of his underlings for any crime they've committed, to prevent them from ever being brought to justice just as he did before. He can be impeached--and should be, and immediately--but he won't be, as the "Democratic leadership" has no belly for it, and even if they did and even if he was, he wouldn't be removed from office, because there are too many Republicans who wouldn't vote for removal even if presented with videotape of him molesting a child. They've stuck with him with the fanaticism of a cult while he's ruined them, even the ones who clearly recognized he was ruining them, and that seems unlikely to change.

At this stage, Trump's "alt-presidency" is still forced to interact, at various points, with the other legitimate branches of government it's trying to erase and supplant but the remedies for Trumptatorship available to the just-elected congress are limited, both by the constitutional processes it must follow (while Trump disregards and ignores those processes, using them only when it is to his advantage) and, most profoundly, by what it will be willing to do. Don't think this problem is solved or take your eye off it for a moment. Even after spectacular congressional wins by Democrats, we're still immersed to the scruff in this fecal matter, and lawmakers are a poor tool against a regime that disregards the law.

--j.